Archive for September, 2011

My friend Natasha Ghoneim went to Cairo this summer, as she does most summers. But this time she went with the goal of finding some of the untold stories of the revolution. As Egypt’s revolution made clear, human rights are not something guaranteed to anyone, not just in the Middle East but in many places in the world.

Work Horses in Egypt

So what about the animal rights in a world with limited human rights?

Arabs don’t have a lot of indoor pets, but outdoors, animals remain their friends and often their livelihood, especially horses. At a place thousands of tourists go every year. This is one of Natasha’s stories, which resulted in an Australia animal relief organization stepping in to help.

The only Muslim I agree with 100% (well, more like 90% of the time) is me. Sometimes I question by dusk religious thoughts that at dawn seemed prophetic. But mostly I agree with myself about God, Mohammed, Jesus, the five pillars of Islam–and yes, the Muslim cliché the hijab, and all other things attributed to Muslims but not really about Muslims, like women driving in Saudi Arabia.

I have a lot of Muslim friends that agree and disagree with me on all of the above. Most of the Muslims I know have no idea what I think about my religion, although some have tried to tell me what I think (“You don’t drink because you’re trying to be a good Muslim” someone once told me, and I didn’t bother to explain that I wouldn’t drink no matter what my religion was and I don’t actually think Islam categorically forbids alcohol).

Just as few Christians, Jews and others know what I think about my religion, although some of them have also tried to tell me. (“You’re one of those white Muslims, so we know you’re not like the others,” was the comfort I got from a co-worker on 9/11, as apparently I didn’t appear brown enough to be bad.)

No one ever asked me, not even other Muslims, until after 9/11, what I thought about Islam. I’d venture to say many of my American friends could barely recall I was a Muslim. For a while after 9/11, I felt it was something that like Mona Eltahawy said in a recent op ed piece for the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/09/muslim-post-9-11-america) I had to mention early on in a conversation. In my case, so no one would say anything bad in front of me and feel like crap later when I then I told them I was a Muslim.

I don’t look like a Muslim not because of the color of my skin but because I don’t wear a hijab. That’s the giveaway in the post-9/11 US and Europe, but not in much of the Middle East, where many choose not to wear the hijab. (Actually, more correctly is that many women choose to wear it).

As a non-wearer, I’ve really come to appreciate the hijab because it gives me a chance to always be the undercover Muslim: In crowded rooms, classrooms, and parties, I get to hear what other people really think about Islam because they don’t think I’m one one of them. And mostly what I hear shocks me, almost as shocking as the dangerous radicalization of Islam in disenfranchised parts of the Muslim world that led to 9/11. Horrific as the terrorism is, it comes from ignorance, from people deprived of education and hope. That’s not something you expect in the West, and yet most of what I hear about Islam is pretty ignorant, mostly boogey man like.

Maybe one day, Muslims will be transformed like the Russians, who under communism could only produce women in our social studies class textbooks were sullen peasant wrapped in fur skin hats, to their general acceptance in all media as hot babes, for better or worse, in a variety of professions.